“It’s a little awkward,” he ventured. Ianthe didn’t understand, she didn’t understand that at all.
“The difficulty, you see,” he said with the air of one handling whimsically a question of perplexity that yet yielded its amusement, “is ... is Kate.”
“She is so--so gone, so absolutely gone.”
“Well, she’s really really in love, deeply, deeply,” he said looking away anywhere but at her sister’s eyes.
“Ho, ho!” he laughed, “Halton! Lord, no, with me, with me, isn’t she?”
But Ianthe was quite positive even a little ironical about that. “She is not, she rather dislikes you, Mr. Prince Charming, so there. We speak of you sometimes at night in bed--we sleep together. She knows what _I_ think of you but she’s quite, well she doesn’t like you at all--she acts the heavy sister.”
“O,” said Masterman, groping as it were for some light in his darkness.
“She--what do you think--she warns me against you,” Ianthe continued.
They left the dark bank where they had been standing and walked along to the bridge. Halfway up its steps to the road he paused and asked: “Then who is it that is so fond of me?”
“O you know, you know.” Ianthe nestled blissfully in his arm again.
“No, but who is it, I may be making another howler. I thought you meant Kate, what did she warn you of, I mean against me?”
They were now in the streets again, walking towards the tram centre. The shops were darkened and closed, but the cinemas lavished their unwanted illuminations on the street. There were no hurrying people, there was just strolling ease; the policemen at corners were chatting to other policemen now in private clothes. The brilliant trams rumbled and clanged and stopped, the saloons were full and musical.
“What did she warn you against?” he repeated.
“But what about? What has she got against me?”
“Everything. You know, you know you do.” The archness of Ianthe was objectively baffling but under it all he read its significance, its invitation.
He waited beside her for a tram but when it came he pleaded a further engagement in the city. He had no other engagement, he only wanted to be alone, to sort out the things she had dangled before his mind, so he boarded the next car and walked from the Tutsan terminus to his cottage. Both girls were fond of him, then--Ianthe’s candour left him no room for doubt--and they were both lying to each other about him. Well, he didn’t mind that, lies were a kind of protective colouring, he lied himself whenever it was necessary, or suited him. Not often, but truth was not always possible to sensitive minded men. Why, after all, should sympathetic mendacity be a monopoly of polite society? “But it’s also the trick of thieves and seducers, David Masterman,” he muttered to himself. “I’m not a thief, no, I’m not a thief. As for the other thing, well, what is there against me--nothing, nothing at all.” But a strange voiceless sigh seemed to echo from the trees along the dark road, “Not as yet, not as yet.”